Marianne, the Matchbox, and the Malachite Mouse (5 page)

‘Now,’ she said without thinking about it, utterly unaware of what she was saying. ‘I think we can assume it would be played this way. The first thing to do would be roll the dice …’

She threw them out upon the game and they came to rest, one, and one.

‘Snake eyes,’ said Marianne, just before she vanished.

Buttercup saw nothing. Mouse saw everything. To Buttercup, sounds were only sensations, some pleasurable, some not. To Mouse they were voices and tocsins and occasions for fear or reassurance. To Buttercup, the world went by in a haze of milky unconsciousness, but to Mouse, it germinated, grew, assumed proportions of threat and vengeance – and opportunity.

The worst part of it was, from Mouse’s point of view, that she could do nothing about anything except perceive it. In the beginning, she could not even stop Buttercup’s aimless armwaving and thumb-sucking. Later on, when it would have been possible for her to stop the thumb-sucking or the howling or anything else she pleased, Mouse had settled down into her observer’s role and was, if not content, at least reconciled to letting time pass.

There was the physical anomaly, of course. Certain parts of Buttercup’s anatomy were not what Mouse was accustomed to, particularly certain parts of the face and feet. For a time this half-familiar, half-strange feeling made her feel panicky, almost hysterical, but then some recollection of other, similar, occurrences soothed her. Time, she told herself. Time would work things out. She settled herself into the mostly milky nothingness to wait it out. There was plenty of time.

And with every passing day, it became easier, she had to admit that. As Buttercup acquired understanding and volition and even a limited ability to communicate, it became easier for Mouse to bear. Sheer tedium gave way to matters of at least transitory interest.

Time passed. The milky unconsciousness turned into perception, into sounds and smells and sights, into the feel of hands on her skin. Single things, at first, and then sequences. And, finally, a full perception of something actually happening: the arrival with her wet nurse at the house of Mr Thrumm.

It was her first clear memory. Before that she might have heard people in some other and previous location speculating as to whether it was yet safe for her to travel, and she did recall a thin and insinuating voice saying something about her safety – ‘The Van Hoost rogue’s safety!’ – being of no possible concern to anyone. She remembered very little of the journey. Perhaps it had been brief. Perhaps she had slept through it. Perhaps, and it was not impossible, she had been drugged. Much later, recollecting Nursey’s predeliction for saving trouble by any and every means at hand, she thought it not unlikely that Nursey had simply given her something to keep her quiet until they arrived. By that time, she had stopped distinguishing between herself, Mouse, and her other self, Buttercup. It was futile. One could only watch and listen and wait for the time when things would straighten themselves out again.

Arrival at Mr Thrumm’s house, however, she perceived in all its details.

‘Here you are,’ burbled Mr Thrumm, peering at her through his thick glasses. ‘From the Palace of the Old Queen, as promised, one article. A sweet one, Nurse, yes she is. But I do see what they meant, indeed I do. She has the Van Hoost chin, doesn’t she?’

‘So they say, sir,’ boomed Nurse. ‘Though I can’t think why. It seems a very babylike chin to me. Not unlike most babies. And if it is a bit Van Hoosty, what of it?’

‘Well,’ he replied, opening the door and beckoning them in (part of her remembered the wheels of a carriage leaving just then, the grating sound of gravel underlying his voice). ‘Well, now, what of it? My dear Nurse, during the reign of one of the aunts of the current Queen – was it during Grislda’s time or Hermione’s? Or could it have been Euthasia? I can never recall – it was determined that the fall in the fortunes of the Royal House had come about because of the admixture of the tainted Van Hoost blood.’

‘Van Hoost was only a young rooster, for heaven’s sake,’ said Nursey. ‘And it was all of a long time ago.’

‘Be that as it may, Nurse. This charge of yours is only the latest in a long line of Van Hoost chins, elbows, and heels – the Van Hoost heel is unmistakable even at an early age – to be sent into banishment – that is, into the care of the Thrumms.’

The three of them, Thrumm, Nursey, and infant went in, taking Mouse along perforce, unseen, unregarded, unsuspected. Buttercup, the infant, had no means of knowing that it was impossible for a child of her tender age to understand, much less remember this occasion. She, the infant, Buttercup, had no means of knowing that such perception was beyond one of her extreme youth and that she must, therefore, be possessed in some very strange way. The urgency and uniqueness of that arrival faded into memory as time went by. There had been only the one arrival, and Buttercup – or Mouse – remembered that distinctly, but subsequently there were many days and seasons of living in Thrumm House, all much alike. They tended to fade together into one endless montage, though the infant still retained very clear and detailed memories of her early months, phrasing these memories to herself in language. The infant had not, as yet, any understanding of language. She did not recognize language, much less speak it, but Mouse did, and Mouse remembered it for her.

Thrumm House was remarkable neither for its size nor for its rather undistinguished exterior architecture, a style referred to in some quarters as Nuvo Obfuscian. It was a dwelling of some fifteen or twenty major rooms, interesting mainly in the extent of its internal drawering. The number and variety of drawers was uncommon, if not unique. They covered every wall from floor to ceiling: the bathing chambers, the stairways, the kitchens – even the little porch where Nursey sat on rainy days singing nursery songs and rubbing thube shrinking salve into her charge’s Van Hoost chin – all the rooms were lined with drawers. There were large ones, including those in which the inhabitants slept, medium-sized and smallish ones for the storage of a multitude of necessary things, and then hundreds of very tiny ones along the floor or up beneath the coving of the stained and cracked ceilings. Some had heavy, ornamental castings as handles. Others had simple knobs of porcelain or simulacre or gold.

In the child’s own room there were one thousand six hundred and forty-three drawers. She
learned
this as soon as she was able to count though she had
known
it before. She learned at the same time that most of the drawers were quite empty. Only one of them had anything in it that she had previously put there. As soon as she could walk, she had taken the jar of thube salve which Nursey was wont to rub into her chin and emptied it into one of the tiniest drawers, refilling the jar with tallow from the kitchen. What moved her to this effort, Buttercup the infant could not have said. Mouse would have said that the thube salve smelled abominably and, more to the point, it itched. The kitchen grease did not smell quite the same, but Nursey, who had very little sense of smell, never noticed the difference and went on tallowing her charge’s chin every afternoon for years.

A tribe of small waltzing mice lived in several of the medium-sized drawers, drawers which Mouse, though not Buttercup, thought were probably connected to the kitchen because of the smell of toasted cheese which emanated each time she opened them. The mice were companions, not useful for conversation but infinitely amusing in the long, dusky holiday hours when the shutters were closed and there was nothing to do. Some of the drawers in the orangery had lizards living in them, and there were bright, glistening snakes in the drawers of the small porch. All in all, she preferred the mice for the bedroom.

When Buttercup was still quite young, after she had learned to walk and count but before she was weaned or could talk with clarity, Mr Thrumm began to object to the name ‘Buttercup.’

‘Not a name which will do,’ opined Mr Thrumm. ‘Not one which will be acceptable on the occasion.’

‘Well, for heaven’s sake, I’ve got to call her something!’ Nursey objected with that stubborn intransigence which was natural to all Nurseys. ‘I can’t go on saying “her” all the time.’

Mr Thrumm grumbled, but did not insist. Acceptable or not, it was the name by which the infant became known to those around her. As herself, she accepted the name, thinking nothing of it. The mouse part thought to itself that it was a ridiculous name for anyone, but most especially a ridiculous name for this – this being that she was inhabiting.

Mr Thrumm, in whose house they dwelt, was not the only Mr Thrumm. Buttercup was to meet three Mr Thrumms, virtually identical in appearance though somewhat varied in habit. Each of them, seemingly, had been awarded the care and custody of Van Hoost rogues since the time, approximately, of Hermione. Buttercup’s own Mr Thrumm was named Raphael. The others, who visited from time to time, were Jonas and Cadmon. Buttercup came to understand that there had always been three Mr Thrumms, always so named. Whether these were the original or successor ones, she was never able to establish, and in fact she – including her separate inhabitant self – grew to feel that it did not really matter.

Mr Thrumm, whether the current Mr Thrumm or a predecessor, had to have collected everything stored away in the drawers of Thrumm House. The current Mr Thrumm, however, passed his time looking for things he or his predecessors had hidden. In the evenings he would sit in a half-open drawer staring into the fire while he made lists of things he hoped to find on the following day. Then, on the morrow, he would look for these things, always finding others which were not on his list. Exclamations of interest and amusement followed these discoveries, though he never actually laughed, and the fact that he seldom if ever found what he sought did not dissuade him from making another interminable list on the following evening. He was not in the least disheartened. He would say to Buttercup, ‘Well, lass, try again, what? Got to be there somewhere, that’s what I say. Those memorabilia of the Great Grisl-Threepian War, for example. Couldn’t have been thrown away, could they? Keep looking, and eventually they’ll turn up.’

Perhaps it was the constant repetition of these words, or perhaps it was that Mouse finally managed to get through to her, that caused Buttercup to hear a reverberation of his words in her own mind, an almost echo instructing her in a firm and not unfamiliar voice, ‘There’s something in this house that I need. Something I had with me when I left. It isn’t in here, where I am, so it must be out there, in the house. You’ll have to find it for me. Don’t forget it, now. It’s important.’

Buttercup could not imagine what this something might be, but the reminder irritated her, causing her to lose sleep, making her lie awake in the closely shuttered dark wondering what might possibly be in any of the drawers that was important to her. Mouse saw this restlessness with satisfaction. She knew she had had the matchbox with her when she left … left wherever she had been. Where had she been? Sometimes it was almost on the tip of her tongue. She had been in … She had been on … Never mind. Wherever it had been, she knew it had not simply been ‘lost in transit.’ The matchbox could not be lost in that way. Intrinsic to its nature or structure was an inviolability of direction. If she, Mouse, had come here, then it, matchbox, had come here as well. It was nearby, and it was up to Buttercup to find it.

In the course of time, Buttercup was weaned, toilet-trained, and taught proper speech and elementary deportment. She achieved her third birthday. It was time for Nursey to depart and for the tutor to arrive. Buttercup did not weep when Nursey went. There was a feeling almost of relief to smell the last of that thube-reeking, deep-uddered being. When night came, however, grief came with it bringing shuddering sobs which Buttercup could in no wise understand. It was as though the very foundation of her life had been torn away without her realizing it. That night she experienced a strong, almost imperative dream in which the unknown voice reminded her to search for something – something very important to her. She wakened from it half terrified.

She sought no comfort from Mr Thrumm. Even in the midst of her grief, she was cognizant that Mr Thrumm would offer her no consolation, even if he had known how.

The tutor was a tall, pale individual who wore tight trousers and short, many-pocketed jackets worked with scenes of forests and glades in tapestry stitch. He carried a slender cane with which he switched the heads off of grasses and wildflowers while on walks. His name was John Henry Sneeth. He confessed in an embarrassed whisper that he did not like the names John and Henry and would prefer to be called simply ‘Sneeth.’ Buttercup had had no intercourse with the outer world and therefore did not at the time think this a ridiculous request, though Mr Thrumm rolled his eyes and pinched his mouth as though to keep back laughter and Mouse rolled about in amusement, figuratively speaking, since Mouse, being disembodied, had no ability to roll about in actuality.

Ribble the cook also quivered with merriment for days after first meeting Sneeth. There were, in addition to Thrumm and Sneeth, two other older persons in Thrumm House, the Ribble couple: cadaverous Ribble who tended the gardens and fat Ribble who cooked. Cook Ribble made up for all the laughter no one else used. Cook was always aquiver: chins, belly, bosom, tiny jiggly bits and pieces around the elbows and knees moving in a constant delirium of motion. Cook’s laughter was as without end as without cause. Cook simply moved in it, like a fish in water, unconscious of its being a medium of transport.

Cadaverous Gardener Ribble was as dry and brittle as a burnt bird’s bone. Gardener Ribble seldom spoke and was never amused.